CHICAGO — A prosecutor who has been accused of misconduct over a failed attempt to bring felony charges against six protesters of the federal immigration crackdown in Chicago has resigned, saying she was being treated as a scapegoat after the case fell apart.
In a scathing letter Thursday to Andrew Boutros, the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, prosecutor Sheri Mecklenburg wrote that she was “retiring under protest.”
“You have forced me to choose between remaining silent while my professional reputation is destroyed and prematurely surrendering my cherished career," Mecklenburg wrote in the letter obtained by The Associated Press. "I choose the latter.”
Mecklenburg accused Boutros of “laying responsibility at my feet for a felony prosecution that you personally directed over my objection that the case was better suited to misdemeanor charges.”
“I was a convenient target to be scapegoated and publicly vilified,” she wrote.
Boutros’ office did not immediately return a request for comment on the letter. Joel Bertocchi, an attorney for Mecklenburg, declined to comment.
During protests last fall against the Trump administration's immigration crackdown in the Chicago area, Boutros' office moved to press felony charges against six people for allegedly conspiring to impede an officer during a protest at an immigration detention facility in the Chicago suburb of Broadview.
A grand jury twice refused to indict the group after Mecklenburg, an attorney on the case, presented them with evidence.
In the following months, the charges fell apart, and in May, Boutros dismissed the case altogether. It was among a string of cases in which the Trump administration leveled charges at anti-immigration enforcement protesters that did not ultimately stick.
The protesters, who have come to be known as the “Broadview Six,” have accused Mecklenburg of prosecutorial misconduct in her interactions with jury members, and have asked U.S. District Judge April M. Perry to consider sanctions on her. Perry is scheduled to hear oral arguments in the case Oct. 1.
In a motion filed Thursday, Mecklenburg informed the court of her retirement and asked to appear as an independent party in the case. The U.S. Attorney’s Office had previously barred her from filing “anything on her behalf” and told her she “could be disciplined or terminated if she did so," the motion read.
Terence Campbell, an attorney for Andre Martin, one of the former defendants, said Mecklenburg's “forced resignation letter raises a number of serious factual disputes" between her account and that of Boutros' office about why the case was brought.
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Mayes-Osterman is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
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